MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 65 
vesting money in locations and methods where total loss and dis- 
appointment will be the only result. With the confident belief that 
there is more salid gain to the wealth of the State in this, than in 
any other unde¥eloped resource, and with a sincere desire to see 
capital invested, yet I want it to be so invested at the outset, as to 
put the question of success beyond all doubt; thus encouraging the 
many to engage in the development of this almost limitless resource. 
The best cultivators of the cranberry in the east have received the 
most munificent returns for their capital and care. 
The first object, therefore, is to sound a note of caution, to those 
who are contemplating the business by exhibiting some of the mis- 
takes which have been made and which are liable to be repeated by 
the uninitiated. 
Most of the errors attending the cultivation of the cranberry, have 
resulted, not from reading on the subject, but from the conceit, that 
having read a book or an article, the person was fully posted and 
capable of doing just the thing described. 
Most persons without experience, will either err by leaving too 
much to their own understanding, or by a mechanical conformity to 
rules under all conditions, fail by too great pains and exactness. 
Whichever way the error is committed, the experimentors will inva- 
riably conclude that the writers were ignorant of the subject. 
The cultivation of the cranberry commenced in Barnstable county, 
Massachusetts, a little more than a half century ago, and although it 
has now reached the magnitude of a leading interest there, yet what 
has been learned up to the present time, has cost that county not less 
than a hundred thousand dollars. This has been sunk in miserable 
failures. 
A few cases will illustrate the causes of failure and the errors to 
be guarded against. One man after seeing a bog sanded, conceived 
the idea that sand and water were the only essentials for a crop; so 
he went to work iu a sand bluff, abuxting a small stream, and levelled 
a plat of half an acre, built a dam, opened sluices, set his vines, and 
then watched and fought the running blackberry vines for ten years, 
ere he would be convinced that bis garden was better adapted to 
blackberries than cranberries. Another man took the opposite 
course. Having a peat marsh so situated that sanding would be 
very expensive, he resolved to make it without sand, and really 
counted upon a fortune in advance, like the milkmaid of the fable, 
and came to as great a disappointment. He cut and removed the 
turf entirely, pilling it up around the outside, leaving a bed of clear, 
mellow peat mud, into which he set his vines. The first year he was 
surprised at the luxuriant growth, which continued rampant through- 
out the second year, but on the third year, when he looked for fruit, 
lo! there were vines ; noting but vines. 
Another man, having a spot of perhaps two acres, with rough sur- 
face and shallow muck, overlaying a clay subsoil, at great expense 
removed both turf and mud, replacing them with a light dressing of 
sand. Here the vines grew slowly ; moss, bries and rushes asserted 
their supremacy ; and, after years of patient care and waiting, with 
no fruit for his pains, he made it over at greater expense than at first. 
Anothe¥ man could not see the need of such expense in draining, 
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